Sunday 10 May 2009

Blade Warding

Ulduar gave us 2 new weapon enchants. One which gives a little health sometimes, and an avoidance-one:

Blade Warding:Permanently enchants a weapon to sometimes grant Blade Warding when striking an enemy. Blade Warding increases your parry rating by 200 and inflicts 600 to 800 damage on your next parry. Lasts 10 sec.

It does look nice, but there seems to be a little problem.

What do we know so far about this.
(and I have read several posts about this, most notably on Maintankadin)

1. Blade Warding DOES stack.
2. If you parry, all stacks are consumed.
3. It procs on ' white' hits.
4. It procs on Hammer of the Righteousness
5. It seems to have a procrate 1 ppm for ' white' hits, increased to 1.33 ppm considering HotR
6. For warriors, the procrate seems to be 1.77 ppm (they have more abilities it procs on)
7. This is not a TPS-enchant, it does a little damage, but that can be ignored.
8. Over the course of a fight, it gives around 0.4% avoidance for Paladins.

Now lets compare that to the other avoidance-enchantment out there. The 26-agility one.
Agility is always on, and gives around 0,35% avoidance, and some armor of course.

So the difference between the two is 0.05% avoidance against some armor.

But, Blade Warding is a proc-enchant. And in my experience, they always happen when you don't need them. While Agility is always on. And as a Tank, I don't like to depend on procs. It may help you ones or twice, but imho, a constant enchant will help you more often. But still, if the proc is very good, I'll take the proc.

But really, does anyone think, that 0,05% more avoidance is VERY good? And considering the fact that agility also gives a little bit more armor, my money would be on 26 agility. In the end, this will give more avoidance, by a long shot, because it is always on.

It maybe more worth to warriors, that's for them to find out, but for Tankadins, it seems not worth the effort to get.

Bottomline:

If you want reliable avoidance: Take 26 Agility

And for the record, my Last Laugh is enchanted with accuracy (12hit/crit). That is a TPS-enchant, not an avoidance one :p

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